to restore Fakhr al-Din (1) Ibn al-Shaykh to favor; he released him, equipped him with an army, and the latter seized the territories of al-Nasir, ravaged the villages of al-Karak, and laid the fortress under siege. Al-Nasir’s partisans melted away, so he composed the following splendid poem to chide the Sultan:

Say to the man with whom I once shared sovereign power of the hand,
For whom I rose to the fray with a lion’s resolute stand:
I defied the prudent elders of my clan for your sake alone,
And obeyed my own generosity and love, deeply shown.
O you who sever the womb-tie whose bond with me
Was etched upon the lofty sphere in letters of gold for all to see!
If you cast doubt upon the purity of my ancestral line,
Then steel your honor for the flames that wait to make it pine.
My uncle is your father, my father his uncle as well;
Through him your lineage tops every gallant king who fell.
He struck and ranged like lions that hunger and roam,
Till the foaming Euphrates’ torrent recoiled in its own home.
Leave the keen blade of my eloquent speech to defend
Your honor with its glowing edge until the end.
For that very blade has forged the crown of your pride,
With rows of pearls and emeralds arrayed side by side.
O you who embarrass me with words—by Allah, whose might
Bows the foreheads of those who prostrate in worship’s rite—
Had your harsh speech not stung me, never would I have shown
Any boastfulness in the verses I intone.
If I have uttered what is foreign to my innate way,
Then let the judges hear and witness what I say.

After that the Sultan summoned Husam al-Din, appointed him his deputy over Egypt, and dispatched Jamal al-Din Ibn Matruh to Damascus. He himself entered Syria, where the lord of Hama, al-Mansur Ṣabi, together with the lord of Hims, came to pay him homage. He then returned to Egypt, pleading illness. Al-ʿAdil secretly put his brother to death—he was only twenty-eight—and an ulcer developed, afflicting his two testes. Later he travelled to Damascus, ailing and borne in a litter, when he learned that the Aleppans had seized Hims. News then reached him that the Franks were moving against Damietta, so he was carried back in the litter, and there he encamped